Kate Bornstein Is A Queer and Pleasant Danger—this is her blog

Out of the Archives: Madness Radio

Three years ago this month, I was turning in the final copy for Hello, Cruel World to my editor, Crystal Yakacki at Seven Stories Press. One of the earliest interviews I did for the book was a 45 minute show out of the Pioneer Valley in Massachusetts. The show is Madness Radio. Will Hall is the host, who's got ties to The Icarus Project, a peer-to-peer support group for youth diagnosed with bipolar and related disorders. I'm a big fan of both The Icarus Project and Madness Radio.

Last night, I had the chance to recommend Icarus to a friend who's going through some hard times, and today I got an email from Will Hall. Oooooh! Synchronicity! Wil was writing to let me know that after three years on the web, the episode just got its first ever comment. LOL! In celebration of this event, I'm opening the vaults. Enjoy the listen.

kiss kiss, Kate

Gender And Sex Positive Talent Agency Open 4 Biz, Needs a Name.

Contest alert!! 

Name the new LGBTQ etc booking agency! 

Wouldn't you just love to work with this woman to book your next campus, conference, or corporate queer talent? 

More and more LGBTQ etc. artists, theorists, film-makers, performers, and lecturers are criss-crossing the globe with their cutting edge sex and gender positive work. For years, there's been no central booking agency for this work. That changes now: there's about to be one place where you can book a full rainbow of Talent: performers, authors, sex educators, activists, comedians, musicians, dancers, and more. We're not exactly a collective, but we're all working together to help get this project off the ground. 

The woman heading this up is Seraphin (pictured here)—she's been booking talent for MTV, but she thinks we're a lot more fun! 

Seraphin is putting a database together from all our contacts. She's also working on the website as I'm writing this. But we can't open the website WITHOUT A NAME?!

In the meantime, though... the agency is open for business! In the spirit of tribe, we promise to keep all our booking fees fair. None of the speakers or performers will be upping our fees to pay the agency a commission. We want all of us: the agency, you as producer, and us as talent—to do well in bringing queer talent out into the wide, wide world. The aim of the agency is to make it possible for anyone to find great affordable queer talent for their campus, company, theater, or conference.

The new agency is opening with these clients: Kate Bornstein, Barbara Carrellas, S. Bear Bergman, Midori, and Dr. Ducky Doolittle. But this is so just the beginning. The as-yet un-named agency is expecting to represent more and more talent over the next few months. If you want your act represented, please email Seraphin at and she'll talk over agency terms with you.

And if you want to book any of us, you can contact Seraphin with a click of the button. The agency already has it's own Twitter account: twitter.com/LGBTQ Bookings. And yes, it includes a LOT more than simply LGBTQ. As an agency, we aim to include any talent who's sex and gender positive.

HELP US FIND A NAME, PLEASE?

Please send us your ideas for the agency name. We want the name to be inclusive of ALL folks whose work is located on the matrix of sex positivity and gender anarchy. Make it sassy! Make it surreal! Make it sweet or serious or sensational. We can't wait to hear what your furry li'l imaginations come up with!

Over the next week, please send us your ideas either via Twitter or by commenting on this blog, or both. Enter as often as you like. We're working out prizes, and we'll be announcing them in a day or two. 

Hurry! It's SO HARD TO LIVE WITHOUT A NAME! The entry deadline is April 29, 2009 and the winner will be announced May 1st, 2009 (which just happens to be my 23rd girl birthday!!!) Get your entries in fast!

This is an exciting development in the queer world, and I'm pleased and proud to be part of it. Please join on in.

kiss kiss

Kate

Disappeared Sex Positive, Gender Bent Books On Amazon.com

Follow Breaking News on Twitter: #amazonfail

It's been called to my attention that it may not be possible to buy new copies of any of my books on Amazon.com. You can find Kindle editions for Hello, Cruel World and My Gender Workbook. Whoopee. And there's no record of my sales record there, either. Dang.

I'm not the only queer, sex positive, gender bent author to have gone missing.  

Thank you, Melissa Gira Grant at Sexerati, who's got the most up-to-date coverage of this weird, weird right wing news of literary censorship. 

Among the MIA (Missing In Amazon): Barbara Carrellas, Dossie Easton, S. Bear Bergman, Helen Boyd, Laura Antoniou, Candida Royale, Julia Serano, Carol Queen, Annie Sprinkle, Lawrence Schimmel. And those were just the first couple I searched for. Holy poop! 

Wasn't Bush voted out of office?? Who is putting this kind of pressure on Amazon.com? Whoever it is, they don't know how subversive and queer Judith Butler is. You can still buy her books on Amazon. But I wouldn't. I'd buy all my books elsewhere, until Amazon comes to it's senses.

I'm writing my agent and publishers to see what's up. In the meantime, you can buy my books through your local queer and sex positive bookstore. If you don't live near a queer or independent bookstore and need to buy online, do check out Powell's Books, a fabulous independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon. Or you can find them used at ABE Books.

Petitions and write-in campaigns have already begun. Check with your fave queer authors' blogs and websites and Twitter accounts for more updates. I'll post more when I know more. 

In the meantime, persevere. Enjoy your sex positive, genderbent theory and porn.

Frak Amazon.com.

Kate

I've Been Lying All Along. Gender IS a Binary.

Of course gender is a binary. What else could it be? For thousands of years—via dozens of major religions, all doctors ever, hundreds of wise philosophers, and countless laws, rules and regulations, even via God Himself—gender has been understood as a binary: man and woman. That's it. I wrote Gender Outlaw as a lark. I'm not even transsexual, for goodness sakes! I don't understand those people. Do you? But once I made my first year of six figure income from sales of that book, I figured what the hell... and then I wrote My Gender Workbook. Excuse me... as if someone could or would "work" their gender. What a laugh. I'm sorry if anyone took me seriously. It was fun for me to write, and I hope no one was inconvenienced.

kiss kiss

Kate